134 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



carefully considered and thought out. And at every 

 yard we peered through the dense foliage to dis- 

 cover anything that might be the black and white 

 of the tapir. 



But before we had gone much farther we suddenly 

 heard the sound of an animal in flight crashing 

 through the forest some forty or fifty yards in front 

 of us. We could see nothing, of course, for the forest 

 was so thick that even at half the distance we 

 should have barely caught more than the most 

 fleeting glimpse. There was nothing that we could 

 do. We stood in silence until the sound died away 

 in the distance, and then, somewhat disheartened, 

 followed up the tracks. 



The great, wide -splayed marks where each out- 

 spread toe had cut deep into the ground showed 

 the frantic haste of the first panic. Gradually, as 

 the pace slackened, the spread of the toes and the 

 depth of the impression decreased, and before we 

 had covered half a mile the tracks regained the 

 normal appearance of the animal's usual walking 

 pace. We traversed some gently falling ground, 

 and then came to a swamp. At its edge the water 

 was knee-deep, and as we waded in we found a 

 treacherous bottom of rotten soil and tangled roots 

 that cheated the feet and turned the ankles. Gaunt, 

 starveling trees grew at intervals, and from the 

 water's edge to a height far above a man's head 

 the swamp was covered with a dense mass of 

 mengkuang palms, whose leaves, shaped like clay- 

 mores, but eight or nine feet long, are covered with 

 double rows of saw-like teeth. Through this we 



